


Coin

by Kayndred



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dream Violence, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Vomit, briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 10:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8140516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/Kayndred
Summary: Of all the things Wanda shares with Pietro, this is the thing she keeps.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if there will ever be more of this, but I actually really like this ship and I've never seen anything for it (and believe me, I'm aware of all the problems it poses). Originally posted on tumblr.

Wanda’s soulmate name manifests early, during the peak of their enhancements at the hands of Strucker. She doesn’t feel it at the time, the pain is too much, too present _everywhere else_ for her to care about a faint prickle across her chest. It’s only when she’s changing out of sweat soaked scrubs that she sees it, a short, curved line of text an inch below her left collar bone. The writing is cramped and slanted, spiky, like it’s hiding, like a secret.

_Tony Stark_ , her skin reads, and she barely makes it to the bathroom before she’s throwing up, eyes watering with rage, with the acid sting of being sick, with despair. 

Of all the names to have, of all the people to be tied to - Wanda spits, furious, and doesn’t flinch when the knobs on the sink twist themselves off and fly into the tub. The bathroom mirror is cracked from where the hinges on the medicine cabinet have mangled themselves, but she can’t bring herself to care. Her skin, the universe, has played traitor to her.

Pietro can never know. 

She stills, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth, eyes wide. Pietro can never know. His hate for Stark is different than hers - where she would see him left in ruin, Pietro would see him beaten bloody and ripped apart. She can never let him see.

That night, for the first and only time, Wanda twists Pietro’s mind, so that if he should ever see the spot where  _his_  name sits, all he will see is unblemished skin. For the rest of the world, the scientists and Strucker and his goons, she buys makeup. It’s unreasonable to think she could keep it hidden in close quarters with her own brother, but concealer will work for everyone else.

\---

In her dreams, she tells Tony Stark she’s his soulmate like this:

The air is full of ash and smoke, and the ground is littered with rubble. Stark’s armor has been ripped from him, crushed and scattered like dead leaves around his crippled body. She stands over him, the wind blowing her hair back from her face, hands alight with her magic, and she says _Look at me._

_Look at me, Tony Stark._

_You killed my parents._

Then she yanks her jacket aside and smears the makeup, and lets him see his name on her skin. His eyes go wide with shock and fear, and she hisses

_I’m your soulmate, and I’m going to kill you._

In her nightmares, it’s different:

They’re standing somewhere normal, like a market or a park. She’s older, she feels older, and her eyes track a child through the crowd, watching, cautious but not suspicious. There’s a touch to her arm, brief, and the hum of a mind that is quiet and warm and content. 

She looks over her shoulder to see Stark smiling, the soft kind that her father gave her mother, that made Wanda think that he would have pulled the sun from the sky if she had asked. He loops an arm around her waist and looks out at the child, his fingers spread across her side, over a gentle, telling swell.

She wakes up sweating and wracked by shivers those nights, her stomach a knot of feelings she can’t untangle, doesn’t want to.

\---

Seeing him is fire.

His mind sings to her, his suit sings to her, his skin sings to her. He is David’s sacred chord, the harmonious sound of heavenly trumpets, of sublime quiet and harmony, he is an instrument crafted perfectly for her hands.

There’s a moment, watching him, standing so close to him she can smell the clean, uncomplicated sweat of his exertion, that she thinks of those dreams, those nightmares. She thinks of his hands - how calloused? - of his scars - how many? - of his heart beat - how strong? 

She thinks, _who is this man, my soulmate?_

\---

A man full of fear - a man afraid of being alone. A man afraid of himself, of his consequences, of his inabilities. A man who would replace himself with an unfeeling robot husk because he thinks himself unfit to protect those who look up to him.

This is what his fear tells her.

Tony Stark is a man who is weak.

And she will break him.


End file.
